Toshiko's Long Night
by Aliciadistrictjack
Summary: Jack sends Toshiko to an abandoned warehouse, but it turns out that warehouse might not be abandoned after all.
1. Chapter 1

Toshiko Sato sighed and put down her empty coffee cup. On her desk in front of her, was a small, remote-shaped, object. Tosh was certain it had to be a piece of alien technology, but she still hadn't found out what it was supposed to do. There were no buttons on it. Just a smooth, gold-coloured surface.

"Have you figured out what that thing is?" Tosh was slightly startled to hear Owen's voice come from behind her.

"No. I tried doing a full scan on it earlier, but..." Tosh held up the device.

"Well, I'm going to grab a couple drinks and then head home." Owen put on his jacket and picked up his bag.

"Maybe we could-" Toshiko started.

"Tosh!" Jack walked down to Toshiko's desk, cutting off her sentence.

"See you later, Tosh!" Owen said once the cog-wheel vault door rolled open. "And you, too, Jack," he added as he exited the Hub. The cog-wheel door closed behind him.

Toshiko felt disappointed. She wanted to ask Owen if she could come along, but it looked like she was going to stay at the Hub after all. Besides, Jack clearly wanted to talk to her about something, so she turned around to face him. "Can I help you with something?"

"Have you made any progress with that thing?" He leaned against her desk.

"No, I did a full scan, but there were no results. I think I'm going to stay here for another couple hours," Toshiko replied. Since she couldn't go to the pub with Owen, she thought that she might as well stay up late at the Hub.

Jack looked like he was deep in thought for a moment, then he said, "Earlier, I was reading about this abandoned warehouse. I detected some unusual rift activity there, and some people have gone missing in the area. I was going to go myself, but I have some phone calls I have to make. So, could you go check it out?"

"Am I going by myself?" Toshiko stood up. She decided that the alien artifact would have to wait until tomorrow.

"Ianto has to work on some stuff, Gwen and Owen have already left, and I have to make phone calls to a bunch of people, so you'll have to go on your own. Is that okay, Tosh?" Jack answered. He looked at the gold-coloured artifact, sitting on Toshiko's desk.

"No problem. Can I take this back to my flat?" Toshiko picked it up. "I think I'm going to need a lot of time with this. Once I'm done checking out that warehouse, of course." She smiled.

"Okay. See you when you get back. Contact me using the comms if something goes wrong," Jack walked back towards his office.

Toshiko put the artifact in her purse, and made sure she had a good supply of bullets for her gun. There was a good chance that there might be nothing at the warehouse, but you can never be too careful. After she put on her jacket and attached the comms device to her ear, she picked up her purse and left through the cog-wheel door. As she was leaving through the main entrance, she passed Ianto, who was sitting at the desk, drinking coffee.

"Going home?" He asked, putting down his cup.

"Jack asked me to go check out an abandoned warehouse. He picked up some unusual rift activity there," Toshiko answered.

"Did you want to take the SUV?" He asked.

"No, I'll just use my own car. I'm planning on heading home afterwards," Toshiko smiled and waved at him, as she walked out the door. "See you later, Ianto."

It took about twenty minutes to drive there. Driving onto the street, Toshiko noticed how dark this area was. If it weren't for the street lights, this street would have been pitch black. She spotted the warehouse, and turned onto the driveway. After parking fifteen feet away from the warehouse, she got out of the car and turned on her flashlight.

The warehouse was huge. This place definitely hadn't been cleaned in a long time. The exterior was filthy, covered with graffiti, and the windows were broken. Toshiko wondered if the inside would look any better.

Toshiko decided to leave her purse inside her car. She thought that she wouldn't need anything besides her mobile phone, car keys, flashlight, and gun. She approached the large warehouse doors and realized that they were locked with a giant metal padlock. Where on earth was she supposed to get the keys? Toshiko glanced around to see if there was anyone around. Once she was sure that no one was watching her, she went back to her car. A few minutes later, she had successfully used a lock pick to unlock the warehouse doors.

Toshiko hesitated before opening one of the doors a little bit. She peered inside the dark and smelly place. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she stepped inside the warehouse, closing the door behind her. Using her flashlight, she glanced around the place, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The place was completely empty. No shelves or boxes. Nothing was still stored here.

Toshiko knew that something had to be wrong. There was a nasty smell in the building, but she couldn't see the source of it. There was also the fact that the interior was very clean. She expected cobwebs, dust, dirt, anything, but there were none. " _Someone's been here recently,"_ She thought.

She began walking around the place, searching for the source of that awful smell. After walking around for a while, she began to feel as if there was another presence in the building, but she couldn't see anyone. She decided to go back to the Hub and pick up some equipment, so she could run a scan for anything out of the ordinary, but as soon as she started walking towards the door to leave the warehouse, she felt something hit her leg.

Toshiko immediately fell to the floor from the intense pain in her leg. When she looked at her leg, she realized that someone or something had shot her with a dart. She pulled out her gun and looked around, unable to get up because of the pain. She couldn't see where this dart had come from. The room still appeared to be empty.

Then she heard footsteps.

They were getting closer and closer, but Toshiko couldn't see anyone. She gripped her weapon tightly.

Then more footsteps.

 _"There's more than one of them,"_ Toshiko thought, _"What am I going to do?"_ Toshiko looked in the direction that the footsteps seemed to be coming from.

Then she heard a grating voice come from behind her, "You should not be here."

Toshiko quickly turned her head towards the voice and then held back a gasp.

"You made a mistake coming here, Toshiko Sato."


	2. Chapter 2

The creature she saw had two arms like a human, two legs like a human, and was wearing a black suit, but the rest of it was definitely not human. The shape of its head was similar to a horse's head. It had yellow, cat-like eyes, and there were six sharp claws on each hand. The creature was green with blue stripes on its face. Toshiko had seen plenty of aliens over the past few years, but none of them were as bizarre as this one.

"What are you?" Toshiko stared at the creature.

"We are Arthrads," The creature said in that same grating voice. Toshiko felt like she was going to get a headache from listening to it. She then heard footsteps right behind her. Turning around, she saw two more of these creatures. They were also wearing black suits.

"How do you know my name?" Toshiko asked, turning back towards the creature that answered her before.

"We actually know quite a lot about you and those colleagues of yours," the Arthrad replied, "We had a feeling one of you would turn up eventually. I was personally hoping it would be that man with the big military coat."

"What have you done to me?" Toshiko pointed the gun at the Arthrad's chest, but it was hard to sound threatening when she was lying on the ground, clearly in pain.

"Oh yes, the dart. It causes intense pain in whichever limb it hits," the Arthrad explained. "We had to stop you from leaving."

Toshiko attempted to pull the dart out of her leg, when the Arthrad shot her with another dart. This time it hit her right hand, which was still holding her gun. The pain caused her to drop the gun. _"No!"_ Toshiko thought.

"This was your warning. Don't try to pull those darts out."The Arthrad crouched down and picked up Toshiko's gun. "That's better."

Toshiko tried to use the comms to call Jack. "Jack! Jack?" Toshiko called, but there was no response. She realized that these Arthrads probably blocked the signal. _"Of course they did."_

"What do you want?" Toshiko asked. Toshiko tried to think of a way out of this, but there didn't seem to be any possibility of getting out.

"A place to hide, and information," the Arthrad responded. "We were on the run, and then the three of us found this planet."

"What information?" Toshiko asked.

"About nuclear weapons," the Arthrad smiled. "Our planet may have ships for travelling in space, but we don't have weapons as powerful as yours."

"What do you need weapons for?" Toshiko knew it couldn't be good.

"War. There have been no big wars on our planet in ages, but our government can't stay the same. People are unhappy with it. If we go to war with them, they'll have to change." The Arthrad said. Toshiko understood why they wanted to do it, but she knew it wasn't right.

"You're going to kill your own people?" Toshiko asked. "Are you sure that's going to work?"

"Our government promised never-ending peace! If we start a war, people will get angry at the government for not keeping its promise." One of the other Arthrads said. "Now you're going to tell us where we can find the instructions on how to build these nuclear weapons."

"I don't know where the blueprints are!" Toshiko said. She tried to stand up, but the pain was still too much.

"Then you'll tell us where we can find nuclear weapons." The third Arthrad replied.

"I don't know where you can find some." Toshiko lied. She remembered the events from several months earlier, involving aliens Jack called Cell 114. Jack didn't know much about them. They infiltrated planets, gathering enough information until they were ready to take over. They disguised themselves as humans, even giving themselves fake memories. One that was activated, tried to access nuclear warheads, located in a mine shaft, underground in the middle of nowhere.

"Don't think you can just lie to us. If you're lying, tell us the truth now!" the first Arthrad raised their voice, stepping closer to Toshiko. "Tie her up!" the Arthrad said to the other two Arthrads. The second and third Arthrads pulled out the darts in her hand and leg. As soon as the darts were pulled out of her, the intense pain was gone.

They used a long piece of rope to tie her up. A few minutes later, she was completely covered in rope, except for her feet, neck, and head. The pain was gone, but now she couldn't move.

"You won't get anything from me. I'd rather die than tell you!" Toshiko glared at the Arthrad.

"Hmm? Do you fancy becoming a slug?" The Arthrad said. "We do have the equipment to do so. Trust me, it's very painful."

Then Toshiko heard footsteps. "What are you doing?!" A man's voice cried. Then she saw a young man approach the first Arthrad.

"We are trying to get information!" the Arthrad yelled at the young man. He had curly, blonde hair, and blue eyes. He was wearing a dirty, grey sweater, and blue jeans.

"I told you not to go outside. What if someone else saw you?" The young man replied.

 _"These aliens seems to know him, but how? He looks human to me."_ Toshiko thought.

"Then we would kill them. Just like we killed those other people who wandered near this warehouse." The Arthrad explained, turning to look at Toshiko. "Plus, we didn't go outside. She came to us."

"But...The door was locked!" The young man said, with a confused expression on his face.

"She must have used a lock pick." The second Arthrad responded.

The young man walked towards Toshiko, "Who are you?"

"Toshiko Sato," She said. She noticed how terrified this man looked. _"Was he forced into some kind of deal with them?"_

"She's from Torchwood." The third Arthrad added.

The young man took a step back from Toshiko. "Tor...Torch...Torchwood?"

"It's surprising that they only sent one of them. I was expecting all five of them to show up with their guns out." The first Arthrad said, circling Toshiko.

"They found us? They found out that there are aliens here?" The young man didn't seem to have heard what the first Arthrad just said.

The second Arthrad said, "Well? Toshiko, did you expect to find people that are not from this world when you came here?"

Toshiko didn't reply. "Well?" The first Arthrad said.

"No..." Toshiko finally replied. She glanced at the young man. _"If he's been forced into this, I have to try and help him if I can."_ Toshiko thought.


End file.
